Predicting the Allowable Settlement of Reinforced Soil Foundations: A Laboratory Study

It is reported in the literature that the load-carrying capacity of the reinforced sand bed increases with increasing the footing settlement. However, the nature of settlement plays a critical role in shallow foundation designs due to the conditional allowable settlement of the footings. In this present study, laboratory model tests have been performed on a model jute geotextile reinforced sand bed under 1 g condition. The associated scaling laws are adopted for the geometrical parameters of the model footing and reinforcements as proposed in the literature. On the other hand, a new approach has been developed for the model reinforcements for scaling down of geosynthetic materials under 1 g condition to simulate the condition of geosynthetic reinforcement layers as in the field or Ng conditions. The test results revealed that based on the scaling factors the model footing can be allowed to settle according to the criteria of footing settlement and allowable reinforcement tensile strains. Finally, the suitable guidelines have also been developed as per the safety considerations in order to understand the effect of reinforcement layers on the improvement of soil bearing capacity ratio (BCR) up to a certain settlement ratio ( s/D ) of the footing.